Chapter I THE NATURE OF HEAVEN

5) If God is not a person, why does
Jesus portray Him that way? This is confusing.

This question goes to the heart of a
very important issue for students of A Course in Miracles: Jesus'
metaphoric use of language. It is a source of great misunderstanding for
students, both in terms of understanding what Jesus is teaching in the
Course, as well as in applying its principles in their everyday lives.
The language of the Course is clearly dualistic, symbolic, and metaphoric
-- as indeed all language must be -- and there are numerous places in the
Course where Jesus explains that he must use the language of illusion --
i.e., duality -- in order for his students to understand the truths he
is teaching. He says, for example, in the context of the newly born holy
relationship:

Of all the messages you have
received and failed to understand, this course alone is open to your understanding
and can be understood. This is your language. You do not understand
it yet only because your whole communication is like a baby's. The sounds
a baby makes and what he hears are highly unreliable, meaning different
things to him at different times. Neither the sounds he hears nor sights
he sees are stable yet.... Yet a holy relationship, so recently reborn
itself from an unholy relationship, and yet more ancient than the old illusion
it has replaced, is like a baby now in its rebirth. Still in this infant
is your vision returned to you, and he will speak the language you can
understand (T-22.1.6:1-5; 7:2-3; italics ours in 7:3).

We all have experienced this same need
Jesus is describing here. When speaking with children we use words and
concepts that are appropriate to the child's level of understanding. Even
if the form of what we say is not always literally true, the content
of our love and desire to be helpful is truly genuine. And later
in the text, speaking of the Oneness of Christ that teaches us from within
our separated minds, Jesus makes the same point:

Since you believe that you
are separate, Heaven presents itself to you as separate, too. Not that
it is in truth, but that the link that has been given you to join the truth
may reach to you through what you understand.... Yet must It [0neness]
use
the language that this mind can understand, in the condition in which it
thinks it is [the dualistic state of separation). And It must use all
learning to transfer illusions to the truth, taking all false ideas of
what you are, and leading you beyond them to the truth that is beyond
them (T-25.1. 5:1-2; 7:4-5; italics ours in 7:4).

Since, as we have already seen, there is
no way Jesus can communicate to us what God our Creator and Source truly
is like, he must resort to the language of myth and metaphor. These are
the symbols that we -- identified as bodies -- can understand. And so throughout
A
Course in Miracles, God is referred to as a body since we cannot even
think of Him without one (text, p. 364; T-18.VIll. 1:7). He is called "Father,"
and portrayed with Arms, Hands, and a Voice, and having feelings of loneliness
and incompletion. It is even implied that God has tear ducts, since He
cries over His Sons who are separated from Him. Clearly, the non-dualistic
God we have described cannot possess these traits or bodily parts. Moreover,
the true God does not think, as we experience thinking. Nor can
He really have a plan of Atonement as a response to the illusion of separation
when, as described in the Course, He creates the Holy Spirit. The apparent
contradiction here is resolved when we understand, again, that Jesus is
speaking to us on the anthropomorphic level we can understand, a wonderful
example of the principle he enunciates early in the text:

... a miracle, to attain its
full efficacy, must be expressed in a language that the recipient can understand
without fear (T-2.IV.5:3).

Students of A Course in Miracles
must be wary of falling into the trap of taking literally what is meant
figuratively. A good rule of thumb is to recall that only non-duality is
real. In contrast, duality is the illusion of separation, as can be seen
in this paraphrase of a sentence from the manual in which we substitute
the word duality for death, a passage from which we shall
quote more fully in a later question:

Teacher of God, your one assignment
could be stated thus: Accept no compromise in which duality plays a part
(manual, p. 64; M-27.7: 1)

Any passage in A Course in Miracles
where Jesus speaks of God doing anything, of having any characteristics
of homo sapiens -- anthropomorphisms -- is inherently dualistic
and therefore is a metaphor to express the abstract and non-specific Love
of God that is beyond all dualism. Similarly, any references to the Holy
Spirit or Jesus doing anything fall into the same category.

To be sure, these are extremely meaningful
passages for us who still believe we are in the dualistic world of time
and space, but to take these statements as literal truth will ensure that
we never learn the lessons that will help us to awaken from the dream that
there is indeed a world of individuality and separate bodies. All too often,
students end up reinforcing their own specialness and identification with
their bodies by never moving beyond the Course's language -- borrowed from
the Bible -- which largely consists of metaphoric descriptions of God and
the Holy Spirit as bodies and persons who interact with them. Focusing
on the Holy Spirit's true role as a Thought in our minds, calling
us to choose Him instead of the ego as our teacher, will keep students
on the right track of forgiveness.